


Wasted Time

by DSBJellyDonuts



Series: The Futures [2]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Experimental Style, F/M, The Futures are angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 16:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DSBJellyDonuts/pseuds/DSBJellyDonuts
Summary: Another take on Future Lucy & Future Wyatt’s return to 2023.





	Wasted Time

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts, mostly finished, for a good six months. I’m having major writers block with my other two stories so it seemed like a good distraction...
> 
> So, here continues my weird love of The Futures. Set immediately after they departed 2018.

The door slides shut and Lucy secures the harness with her own shaking hands as Wyatt begins the Lifeboat’s launch sequence. It’s been a while since they've had to fly manual, but it must be like riding a bike - right? 

Funny the things the mind fixates on while trying to avoid thinking about other things. Like who she used to be, who they used to be - who _they_ could yet become. The lack of warm hands buckling her in - an absence so long-standing she hardly remembers it ever happening. The ringing in her ears, making it all too clear that their presence here is very, very wrong.

She hopes it was enough, that the journal - their information - their pleas - that it was all enough.

The whirring and shuddering starts and she tries to breathe through it, knowing from São Paulo that her head will feel better just as soon as they touch down in their own time period.

At least she hopes it will.

Wyatt successfully navigates them - and their original-edition Lifeboat - back to 2023. She sits with her head back, breathing, stabilizing herself.

“You ok?”

A beat passes before the pain subsides enough that she can nod. She tucks his inquiry away; proof that he still cares, even if only to make sure he won't have to witness her descent into insanity.

But a descent into insanity is what it feels like the moment he pops the hatch open. They’re not back at the sparse barracks they'd inhabited for the past few years, but rather, at the bunker - with Denise and Jiya peering curiously up at them.

“Wyatt… Lucy?” The question comes from Denise, curiosity tinging her voice, as they emerge from the Lifeboat. Off-kilter, she glances his way, even as she _hates_ herself for doing that, for still needing him in that way after all of these years - after everything.

“How… are we here?” she asks them, and they look back at her, equally mystified.

“Guess we changed enough,” Wyatt says from behind her.

“Where's Rufus, though,” Jiya asks, and Lucy doesn't miss the edge of panic to her voice.

“He's - you saved him?”

Jiya looks at them in confusion. “_We all_ saved him… well, Flynn, really. How do you not remember…” She trails off, looking at Denise in alarm. “Denise, this isn't the same Lucy & Wyatt who went to São Paulo. What happened to them?”

Lucy blinks. “What happened to _who_? We just got back from São Paulo. Right before we visited you guys in 2018.”

“Fascinating,” Denise says, looking to Jiya. “When the team returns from a mission, they return to the changed timeline. So after Future Lucy and Wyatt came to visit us in 2018…” Turning to Lucy and Wyatt, she continues, “_We_ are _your_ changed timeline.”

“So are we - are they gone, the other us who lived the last five years? Are they _here_?”

“São Paulo,” Jiya replies. “They left with Rufus five minutes ago.”

_Rufus_. The mere fact that they'd succeeded in saving him was worth any weirdness they might be undergoing now.

“Are they….” Lucy pauses, eyes darting to Wyatt, standing just off to her left, a step behind; needing to know the answer to her question, all the while needing to hide her desperate investment in the answer from him. “Are they _happy_?” 

Jiya’s face splits into a grin. “So much yes. She - _you_ \- got tenure - just today, in fact. And Wyatt’s been working with Denise since Rittenhouse was defeated, keeps him closer to home and out of deployments.”

Wyatt pipes up at that. “We defeated Rittenhouse?”

Jiya nods. “Almost right away, actually.”

“So what…” Lucy takes a deep breath. “What happened after we left?”

“In short? Flynn sacrificed himself to bring Rufus back. Then the four of us went to North Korea… Hungnam. We nearly died, more than once. Wyatt delivered a baby in the middle of it. You'd thought he was dead, and then he showed up with this baby…” She trailed off, a small smile playing about her lips with the memory. “I guess somewhere between that and then thinking we were all going to be killed by communists, you decided nothing mattered except that you loved him. In the end, Agent Christopher showed up and saved us all, but yeah - pretty sure Agent Christopher’s arrival is the only thing that saved me & Rufus from getting a show.”

Lucy could feel herself blush furiously. _Damn it_.

“And Amy? Did we ever get her back?”

Jiya exchanges a look with Agent Christopher. “Not your sister, no. There's _an_ Amy, but - no.”

Lucy crumpled. All of this, and it seemed that she'd straightened out her romantic entanglements - but still not saved her sister. Dropping her head, she feels tears spring to her eyes and scrubs angrily at them - how had she failed Amy so badly?

Wyatt's voice cuts through her grief. “What do you mean, there's an Amy.”

The question was valid enough to startle her out of her misery. She looks up to find Jiya and Agent Christopher conversing silently, with their eyes, as if volleying who wants to take the hit on this one. Finally Denise spoke.

“The twins. Flynn and Amy.”

The - twins? There were twins? As she stumbles back, she notes Denise’s outstretched arm, gesturing to the common space behind them. They were _here_?

Despite their history, despite everything, she glances at Wyatt - needing him to be with her in this, in a way she hadn't needed him in years. Judging from the look on his face, the wide-eyed striken panic in his eyes as he looks back at her, he feels much the same.

Finally he looks over at Denise. “_Ours_?” he croaks out, and Denise’s nod tells him all they need to know.

“Apparently seeing you with that baby did Lucy in,” Jiya chirps, the spell broken. “Didn't take long.” A pause and then, “They're four.”

‘Can we see them?’ sits on the tip of her tongue, but she's not sure if she can ask that - if she's lost the right to ask that through all that she's done. Denise spares her, though, shooting them a look of affection and sympathy and understanding, before waving at them to follow her.

“Come on.”

The girls lay asleep on opposite ends of the couch, and Lucy can't help but marvel at their very existence. And wonder, if the twins are here, and they're here, and their parents are in Brazil —

“They'll be back from São Paulo soon?”

Jiya nods. “Hour or so, tops.”

“So what happens to us?”

“You just… cease to exist, I guess. With Rufus, once Flynn shifted the timeline, he just appeared - as if he'd always been there. We didn't even notice the shift, surprised as hell when he burst through the door.” A pause and then, “I’d guess this would be the same, you'll be replaced by other you shortly. Probably when they get back.” She offered the duo a small smile. “That's what you wanted, isn't it? A better future than what you had?”

Lucy nods, unable to tear her eyes away from the toddlers sleeping on the couch. Dark hair, delicate features - she can see both of them in these girls, and it takes her breath away. Two separate faces - they're not identical - but hints of her and her mom and Amy and _Wyatt_… like everything she's ever known and never met all wrapped into one.

One twin’s eyes part slowly as she shifts around on the couch, seeking a more comfortable position, and she's surprised to see that they're brown. Somehow she'd always expected them to be blue. And then she's kicking herself for ever having had any sort of _expectation_ at all.

Even if it's validated in this moment, in the future of other-them, the one she'd always wanted for herself. The one she'd get, just as soon as she'd stopped being _her_.

Time travel had never felt more daunting than in this very moment.

Still, she was her right now, and if these were her final moments of existence…

“Can we hold them?”

Jiya looks to Denise, who purses her lips. She seems to be calculating, mind whirring - her obligation to other-them and these little girls being weighed against the failure of other-her to protect them from their fate. Finally, she nods curtly. “Just don't wake them.”

She and Jiya step out then, seeming to sense that she'd need a minute, as if they know Lucy almost as well as she knows herself.

Lucy stands and looks at the little girls sleeping on the couch - namesakes of the people other-them had lost, apparently; the one in front of her named after her sister. It's right, she figures; she'd never really accepted that she wasn't getting Amy back, but if she had, she would have named a daughter after her.

Bending, she eases Amy up onto her shoulder, taking in the scent of toothpaste and bubble gum shampoo. She turns, sitting down and settling underneath the little girl, the couch still warm from where she had laid. Amy stirs, just enough to adjust her position, one arm looping lazily around Lucy’s neck, fingers absently tangling in the ends of her stringy hair. The little girl settles back into sleep, a tiny sigh escaping her equally tiny mouth. The breath tickles against Lucy’s neck and her heart stops; in this moment she knows, without question, that she has never been more in love.

It had all been worth it, every moment, every heartache, every risk, every jump - if they've been able to change history, alter their own future - bring themselves to _this_.

She looks back at Wyatt, still staring wide-eyed at the other twin - the one they’d apparently named after the self-sacrificing Flynn. Far cry from the one in their own timeline, eyes set on the opportunity of a life with Lucy, futile in the end, burning every bridge along the way. And she can see it in his eyes, the struggle to rectify the two timelines. Still —

“She's just a little girl. Has nothing to do with him.”

Wyatt glances back at her, the look somewhere between shock that she can still read his mind and damning her for being able to do the same. Finally he bends, easily lifting the little girl, who shifts around as he settles onto the couch.

“Your face is scratchy, Daddy,” the girl mumbles, her cheek brushing against his chin, never opening her eyes. The utterance is all she says, settling back into sleep on his shoulder, and Wyatt looks across at her, wide-eyed. She can't offer him anything but an understanding half-smile, filled with five years of brokenness, five years plus another two before that, of regret and wasted time and _we could have had this_.

So much wasted time.

They have maybe an hour, if Jiya’s calculations are correct, and she doesn't intend to waste it. Wyatt’s right arm is wrapped tightly around the girl curled into his shoulder, but his left lays idly in the space between him. She reaches out to take it - their first meaningful touch in God knows how long - and gives his hand a squeeze.

“I never stopped loving you. You know that, right?”

He looks at her in surprise, but says nothing.

“And I'm sorry. That we couldn't have this. That I cost us this…”

“Don't blame yourself, Lucy. You never would’ve if I hadn't screwed us up first.”

She doesn't rebut it - can't - five years of stubbornness and pride and fear of hurt on both sides burning every possibility they'd ever had into ash. It was so stupid, she realizes now, to waste what they'd had, what they could have had.

And if this is all the time they have left, the minutes until their counterparts arrive back from the past… then she can't think of any way she'd rather spend it than right here, with him, _with them_.

No more wasted time.

**Author's Note:**

> For my fellow writing nerds, the use of present tense was a bit of an experiment for me. Not something I do often, but for this one, it just felt right... (Past would have implied that The Futures had a future beyond that moment, y’know?) #experiments #nerds


End file.
